


Timshel

by Shayvaalski



Series: Outsong [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Homecoming, M/M, Post Reichenbach, Series, Slashy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-06
Updated: 2012-03-06
Packaged: 2017-11-01 13:11:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years after Reichenbach, John and Seb are still living together, and John's beginning to think this could actually work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Timshel

_but I will tell the night_

_and whisper, lose your sight_

_but I can't move the mountains for you_

__

 

 

When John wakes up Sebastian is already in the kitchen making breakfast, and he spares a moment to regret the missed opportunity to watch the other man sleep. Seb in a doze is a study in opposites, the softness of closed eyes against the scar that mars his cheek, slackened muscles against the bones that stand out sharply beneath his skin.

He blinks up at the ceiling. The door is open and downstairs he can hear soft whistling, a tune he doesn't recognize. (Seb, man of few words, is for all that rarely silent. The only thing John has never heard him do is sing, but he suspects that has more to do with Moriarty's feelings on the matter than with anything.)

"Johnny-boy?" He can tell from the sound of it that Seb is at the bottom of the stairs. "Are you up?"

"Getting there. Hang on a tic."

Silence, Sebastian counting off the seconds in his head and radiating disapproval all the way up the stairs. John smiles, just a little, and pulls a shirt on, shoves his feet into slippers.

Seb, who is at the stove by the time John makes his way into the kitchen, is bare-chested and barefoot, a tall blond man in worn trousers, half his broad back taken up with a tiger curling into itself. When he reaches up for salt his muscles shift and the great cat stretches, half-alive.

John sits. Seb, even after two and a half years, looks a little too big for the flat, his shoulders broad-framed against the kitchen window, head brushing the lamp above the sink. The sofa (on which they make him up a bed every evening, moving together but not letting their eyes meet, because Seb hasn't sleep a full night on the couch for months but still, there is nothing happening and this is where he kips) is a little too short for him, so that whenever Sebastian flings himself down on it and drags John after, he always has to rest head and shoulders up against one arm. John can't imagine the flat without him anymore, idly picking up everything and organizing it against some internal system that makes John wonder why, exactly, Moriarty preferred the Christmas cards arranged by color. (Both their names started appearing on the cards after that first Christmas when Seb lurked behind John the whole party, not quite touching but close enough to touch.)

The plate clicks down in front of him. When it's John's turn to make breakfast--a turn that comes increasingly infrequently--they have cereal, or oatmeal on a good day, but Seb makes omelettes and homemade granola with yoghurt and thick-cut bacon and Belgian waffles, apparently without thinking about it.

(It's the only meal he wouldn't fight me, he'd said, once, picking at a piece of Sunday-morning pancake. Jim was shit at mornings. Ate whatever I gave him. Just as well. Skinny fucking bastard.)

Seb's hand brushes the back of John's neck, thumb sliding down the line of vertebrae and stopping just short of his collar, but by the time he looks up Sebastian is putting a dish in the sink. They do not touch in daylight, nothing more than the occasional you're-in-my-way bump of two men in a one-bedroom flat, and John clears his throat. Seb's shoulders tighten, just a little, and the faint familiar voice in the back of John's head notes that the blond man is entirely angled towards what he is going to say next.

"About the sheets," John begins, and wonders where that came from. Seb's back registers surprise, and he half-turns, one pale eyebrow up.

"Come again?"

"You need to change them." It's inane, it's stupid, it's skating too close to breaking the careful agreement that Nothing Is Happening, and John doesn't care  because it has been two and a half years and he is tired of this. Seb gives him the kind of look he must have learned from Moriarty, because it seems all wrong on him--head tilted back, eyes hooded and dark, his face as still as stone; a warning off. John meets it head-on and evenly, and the kitchen begins to all but hum with tension.

And then Sebastian looks away. "Alright," he says. His voice is mild, and the incongruity of it throws John off completely, and the moment breaks.

They eat in silence, and Seb sits in the chair nearer to John, instead of across the table, in something like apology.

 

John showers alone. Once in a while on John's days off, Seb--who is a creature of habit--will wander into the bathroom halfway through his shower and look surprised to find him still at home, but not today. He'd left Sebastian in the living room, rearranging furniture and folding the blankets on the couch, his gray-green eyes a million miles away. This is a thing he does sometimes, all his motions gone smooth and mechanical, and if John speaks to him he startles like a flushed deer and John knows he's been with Moriarty.

The water hisses in his ears. Sebastian doesn't talk about James like he's dead, rarely uses the past tense except at night and almost never talks about the months leading up to Sherlock's fall. (Wasn't really a good time, Johnny. Not sure he slept one night out of ten. That bastard drove him like a dog drives sheep. And then the sideways look, the testing, careful one, how much can I get away with saying. Wanted to get his hands on Sherlock even more than you did--and there John stopped him, fist driven into belly, and it carried them both off the bed and into the floor, bruises and blood and Seb's chest pressed hard against his own.) John wonders what it is, that caught Sebastian up so that he never gets any farther away from a gray afternoon almost three years ago, and John has finally realized that he's going to be fine, and that Seb isn't, and there is absolutely nothing he can do.

 

There's something half-familiar about the way the living room looks, but Seb is still in the middle of hauling the couch three feet to the left, so John chalks it up to that he's finally run out of creative ways to rearrange the furniture and says so. The look Seb gives him is filthy, but affectionate, and when he finally finishes squaring the legs neatly against the wall he wanders over to where John is sitting, aimless and intent.

Sebastian runs a rough hand through John's wet hair and down the line of his jaw, and when John looks up, startled, Seb kisses him.

Bloody _finally_ , John thinks, and reaches up to pull him closer, but the other man is already moving away, continuing on his interrupted path like nothing had happened, nothing at all. John lets his hand fall, looks down at the newspaper in his lap and does not see it.

The whole morning is like that, Seb by turns a little too close and totally indifferent, and John can't help but consider the idea that they've reached some kind of turning point, that maybe Sebastian looked at him this morning without seeing a dead man over his shoulder, that possibly it's time to take the sheets off the couch and tell Seb it's his home too, if he wants it.

It's not that he doesn't miss Sherlock. He does, and walking past his locked and empty room still hurts, but living a life with no happiness in it cannot possibly be the right way to mourn. And John thinks he could be happy with Seb--no. He is happy with Seb. He likes arguing with him in the shops about health food and skim milk, the disgusted noises Sebastian makes at Eastenders and the way he watches it anyway, hanging over the back of John's chair and scoffing. He likes that Harry finds him baffling but invites them both over anyway. And most of all (though he will never admit it, not even to himself, because of course it is only theoretical and not a thing that's going on) he likes Seb's sleeping breath coming soft against the nape of his neck. John looks over at Sebastian, wonders if he should say something, decides against it.

There will be more than enough time for that.

 

Half an hour later, and there's a dissatisfied grunt from the kitchen. John glances up; Sebastian is peering into the coffee tin, turning it upside down, locking eyes with John, who tries to ignore the way his stomach lurches just a little and says, "Alright, what's got your back up?"

Seb snorts and flicks a fingernail against the side of the tin, making it ring like a bell, isn't it _obvious_ , Johnny?

"So have tea."

"Not in the mood." The tall man goes from kitchen to hallway, takes his jacket off the hook. "I'll just go 'round the shops. You want anything?" He is leaning on the doorframe and John thinks, maybe over dinner they can talk, so that he has something to do with his hands and Seb can play with his food. 

"I'm alright. Keys are in my blue jacket, right pocket." Seb fishes them out, flicks his fingers in what for him passes as a wave, and goes noiselessly down the stairs. John hears the front door shut, distantly, and sits back, enjoying the midafternoon quiet for a few moments before picking up his paper again.

And then he hears the door open, and footsteps on the stairs. 

Forgot something, is his first thought, cash probably, didn't see him take anything from the jar. And then, because the steps are very slow, and sound a little wrong, hurt himself maybe? We've got to fix that loose step, Mrs. Hudson's going to--

"John."

John. Not Johnny, and the voice is strained too, and not warm enough, so he half-turns in the chair, a question forming in his mouth.

It takes a minute for John to work out that he's fallen asleep, and he sighs inwardly; someday, he knows, this dream will stop coming, he will not wake up to find tears pooling against Sebastian's collarbone and strong arms supporting sobs, it is just the last of the grief leaving him in the only way it can.

"Hello," says Sherlock, and tries to smile.

John sits quietly, waiting. He never gets much past this point; his mind won’t let him. He assumes it’s some sort of mental self-defense, a protection from the kind of pain that would be overwhelming, and John is willing to let it do its job. He laces his fingers together in his lap, gazes evenly at Sherlock; his hands are not shaking, he is very calm. Soon Sebastian will come home and wake him, bumping the door open with his hip and dropping everything on the kitchen table, and he can leave Sherlock behind in sleep, where he belongs. 

Everything is going to be fine.

Except that Sherlock is stepping forward, movements a little stiff, to stand an arms-length away, just barely at the edge of John’s personal space. His eyes flick over John, over the dusted mantelpiece, the rearranged furniture, the neatly-organized bookshelves, and clears his throat. Sherlock is very white against the dark walls, the black coat, the overlong hair that curls into his face. 

“I’m home,” he says, and there’s a hint of question in Sherlock’s voice, though his face gives nothing away. This will pass, thinks John. It has to pass, just please God, don’t let him come any closer, I can’t bear it. He pinches the web of skin between thumb and forefinger, surreptitiously, but since Afghanistan John has dreamed in pain and it doesn’t help. Sherlock crouches down in front of him, trying to catch his gaze, looking awkward and that’s not right, Sherlock never looks awkward or out of place or confused. 

“John. Are you alright?” 

It must be that he’s finally made the decision to ask Seb to stay. Misplaced emotion, that’s all, the final-letting go of Sherlock, acknowledging that things are going to be different now, that he’ll have to unlock the second bedroom’s door and clear out his things. John takes a deep breath. Sebastian won’t be much longer. This will probably be the last time it’s this bad, the last time Sherlock seems so solid that John could reach out and touch his arm--

\--no. John sets his teeth into the inside of his lip. It’s just a matter of time. 

Sherlock straightens up, pale blue eyes on John’s hands quiet in his lap, his shoulders rounded forward, and comes to some sort of decision. “It’s going to be fine, John,” he says, quietly, and John knows him ( _knew_ him) well enough to know the careful voice, the one he uses on the rare occasions that he recognizes as requiring a gentler touch. “I’ll make some coffee and we can talk.” 

But we’re out of coffee, thinks John, then lets it go. Maybe they’re not, in his dream, or maybe this will be the thing that wakes him, provides the extra bit of tension between reality and the world in which Sherlock is in the kitchen, getting down mugs from the cabinet. Another deep breath. He hopes Sebastian isn’t home already, hasn’t noticed him dozing and decided to let him rest, like he sometimes does when John hasn’t been sleeping well, hopes to hear the door slam at the bottom of the stairs, to feel Seb’s hand against his shoulder. 

There’s silence from the kitchen, and John realizes he’s been sitting through the kettle boiling and the lid being taken off the coffee tin, which for some reason always makes a hell of a noise because it doesn’t fit quite right, he keeps meaning to get a new one, and then Sherlock is standing in front of him again, holding out a piece of paper, face blank as a field where snow has just fallen. Without thinking, John takes it. 

_Johnny. It happened. xo, SM._

For a moment, nothing.

And then he looks up at Sherlock and the world stutters into motion like a film restarting, because Sherlock knows, of course he knows, and Sebastian is gone, and the room looks just like it did the day he came home from the funeral to an empty flat. 

The blood is roaring in John’s ears. He doesn’t know if this is a beginning, or the end, but he knows, with a kind of empty certainly, that he is awake, and this is real. 

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics and title taken from "Timshel" by Mumford and Sons. Vocal_bard and andthebluestblue chivvied me along.


End file.
